Georgie: [00:00:00] This is the Breaking Up with Binge Eating Podcast where every listen moves you one step closer to Complete Food Freedom, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my co-coach, Mary Claire Brescia.

Everybody is stressed, but we don't always understand exactly what that means. So, of course, how can we be clear on what to do with it? Hi, I'm Georgie, back with the Breaking Up With Binge Eating show, and today I have Christina Jodoin with me, who is now Christina Holland, since you just got married and I still have to get used to your new last name. You may know Christina because we've been recording the Confident Eaters show together for several months, but this is your official welcome to the breaking up with binge eating [00:01:00] podcast.

Christina: Yay. Thanks, Georgie. I'm really excited to be here. I know I've listened to this podcast for a long time and pretty much every single one of my clients has been a long time listener, so it's an honor to be here with you.

Georgie: Just so you all know, Mary Claire is alive and well. We don't have her locked up in a closet somewhere. She is still on the Confident Eaters team. She's just gotten super busy with clients and taking care of our groups. So the way that the workflow is going, Christina and I are. We are heading the podcast department at Confidanteaters, but Mary Claire is alive and well. Don't worry. I haven't kidnapped her. So, today we are talking WTF is stress management. It's sort of a cliché phrase that sometimes conjures images of yoga and bubble baths and other things that don't feel very real life to me, but stress, yeah, that definitely sounds like part of my life. And whether we describe stress as mental or emotional strain or [00:02:00] tension, it's a response to being challenged or in adverse conditions. So unless your life is completely challenge free, you too have stress. If you imagine your life for the last 24 hours, you can probably identify a lot of things which have challenged you to a greater or lesser extent.

And the only way we could eliminate stress from your life would be to create a life with no challenge in it. Which means you have to give up on wanting to do anything, ever. That's not our nature, and how wonderful that we're inclined to take on challenges like loving people, running races, getting education, or convincing a toddler to hold still so you can put his shoes on.

Christina: Yeah, I think when you put it that way, most of us, when we zoom out, would not say that we want a life devoid of challenge because it brings all these other wonderful things. If so, that means that some stress in life is actually a really meaningful [00:03:00] part that contributes to our growth, and I think that can be a really good thing.

I can say that for myself for sure. We all probably experience a variety of different genres of stress in life, and I can say most of them are worth doing. Stress can, of course, vary from situation to situation, but an example that comes to mind we were just talking about before we started recording is different jobs I've had in life, but this one specifically was Kind of a tough transition for me at the beginning. But yeah I basically started this nutrition coaching job, you know, during COVID and got connected with you, Georgie, and you've just been super supportive.

And although it has been challenging, I've learned so many skills that not only helped me with my coaching, but in my relationships, and it's definitely been worth doing.

Georgie: And very stressful, and very stressful at the same time.

Christina: Yeah, it's like I've been I've been growing as a person, but also it's [00:04:00] definitely been stressful. Another example that I think can bring some stress in our lives are relationships. If we want deep and meaningful relationships, that means we're gonna have to go through some hard stuff. It requires us to learn to be vulnerable and set boundaries, which can be stressful uncomfortable. So what I'm curious to know when it comes to stress is, like, what's going on in our bodies, Georgie? I know you can break it down for us

Georgie: yeah. We all know that like we experience stress as both mental and physical. Like you have like a stressed stomach or a stressed look on your face or a stressed nervous tick.

So our bodies have a really interesting response to an acutely stressful event. So for the example today, let's say a large dog lunges at you on the sidewalk. Clearly it wants to bite you. It's snarling and showing its teeth and the owner grabs the leash just in time [00:05:00] to save your face. That is an acutely stressful event.

Emotionally, you'd feel frightened, surprised, confused, and finally relief when the owner, you know, grabs that leash. You may also feel anger at the dog or the dog owner for their behavior. But there's a lot also going on in your body besides those emotions. So what happened? Your adrenal glands rapidly pump out epinephrine and norepinephrine.

That's followed up about 20 minutes later by another hormone release called cortisol. These three hormones cause a cascade of responses in your body that are designed to help you survive a threatening situation, like a predator. After the dog encounter, you'd probably find your heart rate and blood pressure would be up, your blood sugar would actually be higher if you tested it, and there would be changes to the blood flow in your body.

It goes more to some areas than others, which is one of the reasons people's faces blanch or get [00:06:00] bright white if they have a significant shock. There's also changes to memory and learning. because your body is designed to learn certain things more or remember them less depending on the stress response that you're having at the time when you encounter information.

You don't need to prioritize digestion or reproduction if you're running away from a tiger or a dog on the sidewalk. So those systems get slowed down or shut off, but thankfully. Phew, you didn't die, you didn't get bitten in the face. So if you sit down on a bench and you take some deep breaths, you can feel your rapid heart rate slows down.

And then if a co worker walked by and said, Oh my God, are you okay? And you told her what happened and she gave you a hug and sat with you for a bit, you'd start to feel better. After maybe 20 to 60 minutes, your blood pressure and heart rate would be back to normal. Your body would resume digesting food, you'd get the normal color back in your face, and things more or less go back to regular [00:07:00] functioning.

Does that all make sense?

Christina: Yeah, I definitely think it makes sense, and I know that in those times where we're getting a dog lunging at us, like, those are times to be very grateful for stress in our bodies and the responses that happen. So then why, Georgie, is it important for us to manage stress?

Georgie: That's a good question. So, the way I described that stress response which resolves itself, it doesn't always happen that way. Many people can relate to, if a dog lunged at me, I probably wouldn't sit on a bench to gather myself because I'd be late for work.

I gotta go. I might not stop and get a hug from my co worker because I've been conditioned. When I walked in the office and somebody said, you look pale. Are you okay? We would just say, Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Cause that's what we've practiced doing for years and years. And then if I hustled into a meeting and found out, oh, my job might be eliminated by the company, there we go again.

So, without even getting back down to [00:08:00] baseline, all of a sudden I'm getting another stressful response going. And so these stress responses tend to pile up one on top of another, where we're never really getting all the way back to baseline. And that not getting back to baseline is What can cause problems for us health wise, you know, mental health and physical health wise.

So, managing stress is about getting out of the acute stress response and letting it resolve all the way back.

Christina: Yeah, it sounds like being in a constant state of stress really is rough on the body. I know that if you have experienced something like what Georgie was just describing, if you never have that opportunity to turn that stress off, it can cause some health problems for you.

You know, just a quick Google search can pull up whole host of things, both mental and physical, like cardiovascular disease, stroke, depression, insomnia, infertility. Missed menstrual cycles, anxiety, and these are just a few. So I don't know about [00:09:00] you, but if there are ways to avoid having that constant state of stress and avoid these physical repercussions, by managing stress, then I want to learn about them.

Georgie: Yeah, I agree. I mean, it does not feel good to be in that layer upon layer of active stress all the time. I know I have definitely made the mistake, many people do, of thinking, It's my life that's stressful. It's all these events that are happening to me, but I can't quit my job or sell my children or prevent my roof from leaking.

So what am I going to do? But there are actually things that we can do to try and close this stress response cycle, so to speak. And sometimes we take actions that actually make our stress worse. Even though we're trying to help ourself feel better.

Christina: Yeah, I can think of a few things like drinking alcohol. I know a lot of clients that we work with and even friends will just talk about needing to take that edge off at the end of a [00:10:00] stressful day with a glass of wine or cocktail. And it ends up being something that we depend on just to feel quote unquote calm. But the thing is it's. While it may feel like it's reducing stress in the moment, it can negatively impact your sleep and your natural way of our bodies recovering from stress.

Alcohol, especially in excess, can cause health problems in and of itself and it can harm relationships if it's taken too far. drugs are another thing that can be used in a similar way because initially you might feel that reduction of stress and at least let us forget about the stress that we're feeling for a bit, but then the negative effects might be doing more harm than good, unfortunately.

So another common way that we hear people talk about reducing their stress is through food, of course, like that's what people that we talk to on a daily basis use to cope with their stress, but they're [00:11:00] realizing that it's leading to some of these unhelpful long term outcomes.

And maybe if you're listening to this podcast and you have used food to manage your stress, that you have gotten to a point where you see some of those negative effects of using food, even if it is providing some kind of benefit initially, which like we wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't providing any benefit.

Georgie: Right

Christina: But. balancing that with the negative effects that it's having. So other examples that you might also have tried or that we know can be used for stress are things like excessive shopping or gaming, scrolling. I know that's one that I've used to just numb out from the stress that I'm feeling and none of them are really that adaptive to cope with your stress. In fact, they're mostly maladaptive ways of coping with stress. Do you have any to add to that, list?

Georgie: Well said. I also frequently fall into the scrolling too much on my phone. And when we look at that [00:12:00] as, like, Yes. Okay. So this is an attempt to manage stress, just like binge eating as an attempt to manage an emotional state.

We can see like, okay, this is not a character flaw. It's just me trying to help my system reset, but maybe I can find a better way to do it. I definitely have heard of aggression being something that can result. I mean, in animals, animals have stress responses as well. And a lot of research has been done on rodents and non human primates. And one interesting thing that I remember hearing in a lecture was that if a rat is given some sort of stressful stimulus, like a shock or something else, and they have another rat in the cage that's like a subordinate rat that they can go over and bite, that if they go over and act aggressively to the other rat, their stress response actually comes down to normal, which sounds kind of terrible.

No, I'm not advocating violence so that we can all reduce our stress responses, but we can see [00:13:00] that, it helps us start to understand how higher stress rates can be linked to problems like domestic violence, substance abuse, and binge eating. Because we can see oh, okay, so this is not the best solution to a problem, but we can understand why we and other people do it.

So thankfully, We get to choose how we respond to this challenging world we live in, and that is what we're talking about today. not only does food help relieve stress, but so does exercise. From the rodent research, we know putting a running wheel in the cage with the stressed rat is also effective.

In bringing that stress cascade back to baseline. Also being around your friends and family and receiving a physical touch in the primate research that I've looked at when animals groom each other, that brings their stress back down. And when I was reading it, it made me think of how many clients that Christina and I have who love getting their nails done and getting their hair trimmed, getting a facial.

And it makes me think like, [00:14:00] yeah, there is something beyond the fact that it makes us feel like we look fabulous. There's like a cooperative physical touch grooming thing going on that reduces stress hormones.

Christina: Yeah

Georgie: so for the rest of this episode, we're going to talk about some of the specific options that we can choose to intentionally help us regulate our stress response.

So we don't bite our cage mates or suffer the health effects of chronic unabating stress. So, Of the four keys we'll talk about today, the first one is actions. A lot of the basic self care that we think of, like regular sleep and wake times, eating regularly, exercising, choosing a nutritious lunch, All of these help our bodies cope with daily challenges and return to baseline after that stress response has done its job.

So if you feel like your life is currently too stressful, it may be that there's an imbalance between the challenges coming your way and the actions that you're taking to support yourself and recover [00:15:00] from stress. You might be able to handle the same stressful air quotes life without as much wear and tear.

If you're more consistently eating healthy meals, getting enough sleep, hugging your loved ones, and setting boundaries around your work or other responsibilities. So the first key is actions.

Christina: I love that. another one in addition to taking action is getting support from others to handle your stress. And one way we can draw from others support is through social connections between friends and family. However, if you're like me and some people I talk to, maybe you're worried that you're going to be a burden to others and you don't want them to worry about you, but this type of thinking can actually prevent us from reaching out and using our social support network to manage that stress. So if you think of your social connections as a healthier way to manage stress than some of those [00:16:00] maladaptive ways, then who might that be for you in your life?

Do you have a friend you can reach out to to be a listening ear or process through a situation that you're going through? Are you planning, intentionally, times of fun with people who fill your cup and bring you joy? It's not just about going to them for the hard things, but also ensuring that you have that time scheduled in to spend with them, which I guess is similar to the actions you mentioned earlier. Or at least making sure that you have margin in your life to spend spontaneous time with people and just have a little bit of fun.

Georgie: Yeah, I totally agree. It's funny how, as we learn more every year, you know, we do better. And even as coaches, like we learn more all the time. And one of the things that really struck me over the last, like maybe two years was really the benefit of social connections.

I was very much like the lone wolf, like didn't really lean on people. One could say pathologically independent. And when I look at my book. Give yourself [00:17:00] more, which came out in 2020. So we've got like a four year time gap here. I love the section on managing emotions and regulating emotional state.

And one of the things that to my current eye is conspicuously absent is that I don't mention turning to other people. Like there's all this, all these strategies that you can like do yourself because I'm a total DIYer. And that's just one of the things I can see that will have to go in the next book that comes out is, you know, that'll have to be my new personal development is to actually include other people in your life can be remarkably helpful.

Christina: Absolutely. And you don't know what you don't know until you know it. And it's now an opportunity to expand on that topic, like you said.

Georgie: You don't know what you didn't say until you publish it.

Christina: Right. Yeah. And now it's there forever with its own ISBN. So another means of support that we can draw from is some kind of faith practice or spirituality.

And I want you listeners to reflect on that. What [00:18:00] might that look like for you? I know that prayer and meditation are popular ways to Calm the nervous system, but also allow you to view the world with a zoomed out perspective . I know for me personally, faith has been a very significant part of my life that has helped me get through some difficult seasons and just see my situation in the bigger picture.

It can also make us feel more connected to the common humanity of the world around us. Another social factor of stress management is whether you have a stable and reliable home life.

And a personal example is I grew up moving every couple of years because my dad was in the military and moving is a very stressful thing, even if it's become a regular part of your routine as a family, and it can have an impact on your life. And people who have lived through natural disasters can also feel that effect of instability.

If they were displaced due to a hurricane or [00:19:00] tornado, and another example of instability in the home is financial insecurity, and that can affect the level of stress that you're living with. So, on the other end of that, if you have a reliable home where you can live, you can recognize that this is a resource that you can draw from and be grateful for.

And if you do have housing insecurity or frequently moving and don't have a stable, reliable home life than recognizing that the other elements we're talking about might be extra important for you to prioritize things that you do have control over when managing your stress.

Georgie: Yeah, it's a good point. Some of this stuff is not up to us. Nobody opts into financial insecurity or chose to be evacuated from their town due to wildfires. So I think just recognizing the significance of how much strain that puts on us can maybe be a motivating factor to recognize like I need to [00:20:00] do something concerted to help support myself to have some stability to connect with the people That I can connect with. So, we talked about actions, we talked about the role of support in stress management. Third, I want to talk about outlook. Managing the impact that stress has on you depends on what stories do you tell yourself about your stress. These might be harmful or they might be helpful.

Like so many things in life, an event or situation can feel dramatically different to two different people. Based on our interpretation of it or the meaning that we give to it. This is one of the reasons why some individuals report really high levels of happiness and life satisfaction when they have experienced terrible luck or brutal life circumstances.

Similarly, someone with a pretty minor disruption to their life, or what looks minor to an outsider, can feel completely overwhelmed and disturbed by it, depending on the meaning that they give it. For example, let's [00:21:00] say you have friends over for a little get together, and you order some food. The delivery is supposed to be here at 7, 7 comes and goes and there's no food.

Your friends are looking kind of hungry and you call the restaurant and they really don't give you any good explanation except, oh, oh yeah, the driver left already, he's on his way. So 8 o'clock rolls around, still no food. Your guests are hungry, you are hungry, and you don't have any of the usual appetizer stuff like cheese or crackers.

So you're feeling stressed. Place yourself in this admittedly uncomfortable spot. What do you think you would realistically do? You might have thought, I'd be in the bathroom crying, I'd be embarrassed, I'd blame myself for it, I'd probably apologize 450 times to my friends for the no food situation, I'd probably not want to host another get together for at least a decade because I'd convinced myself that I'm a lousy hostess.

Alternatively, you might take that same situation and go into problem solving mode. Be like, hey, I [00:22:00] am popping a frozen pizza in the oven. I am breaking out Cheerios and milk or bananas and peanut butter to tide everyone over. And which of these would lead to feeling more upset? Definitely the first one.

If a snag with the food plans means you're to blame, you're a bad hostess, causes you shame and embarrassment, you're going to experience a much greater disruption to your emotional and physical state. But, if you don't give the situation the same meaning, And you simply look like, okay, what can I do here to solve some problems?

You will not have as dramatic of a stress response. And it will take less time to feel settled, safe, and happy again. People who thrive despite high amounts of objective stress tend to have positive views of stress. In other words, they don't hate it or avoid it or fear it to the same degree that other people do.

This is in stark contrast to the idea of stress will kill you. Rather, we can view stressful events as [00:23:00] challenging. They can be where we highlight our strengths or the times that we learn the most in our lives. Instead of thinking of stress as something that destroys you, consider that it might be a necessary stimulus to build yourself into a stronger and wiser person.

I've seen a quote I always liked that people are like tea, you never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water.

Christina: That's awesome. And I think it's such a good reframe that you're saying there. And it's one of the skills that we talk about with clients all the time. It's just like your outlook and the ability to reframe situations.

I definitely tend to be the type of person that's like stressed about being stressed. And then it just gets worse. Instead of I love being around people who are more so viewing it as a challenge the good news is you can develop that skill to view situations a little bit differently.

So I love the outlook piece. The fourth piece that we wanted to share with you with [00:24:00] managing your stress in life is pacing. And after planning this episode, we realized that there's so much more we could say about this. But for the sake of this episode, pacing is really just giving yourself that time to recover from difficult events.

Sort of like we talked about at the beginning. Can you sit down on the bench and take some deep breaths? Allow yourself to be with the people you love, take time to sleep or have a break from work after a major life event. All of these things ways you can pace yourself. It's okay to take a break. I think we need to hear that because we live in such a hustle culture where it's like, Oh, I can sleep when I'm dead. And Oh, I guess that means I should just expect the same effort from myself no matter what difficult things have happened. And I like to use this example. Imagine if you were driving to the gym and you almost got hit by another car, that's stressful. Then when [00:25:00] you get to the gym, you might need a minute before you can do those sprint intervals or do that hard workout. So allowing yourself a little bit of time to come down from that might yield better results in your workout or just give yourself that break that you need.

Georgie: Yeah. I was just thinking like, what gets in the way of us doing this is like the constant rush that we're in.

Christina: Right.

Georgie: Hurry, hurry, hurry. Or the denial like, ah, I'm not bothered by that. I'm fine

Christina: right. There's actually a book I read last year. It's called the ruthless elimination of hurry. And they talk about hurry sickness and how we're just. All running around feeling hurried all the time, and that definitely a major contributor to our stress, I think, in life. So if we can eliminate some of that, that hurry, then we have that margin. We can take that break and. Take good care of ourselves. Another example might be if you get bad news at work you're not going to be your most productive [00:26:00] self for the rest of the workday after getting really bad news.

So pacing yourself is just a way that you can manage your expectations. And again, we're probably going to have to record a whole different episode on this topic. It's something we could go so deep with and it's an important skill to develop as well.

Georgie: Yeah, just that time to recover after a difficult event after any sort of challenge or stressful thing is so helpful and so rare.

I know one of the things I've learned over the years is I need a day to recover after travel before I jump to work like I can't get home at eight in the morning and start working at noon like this is not going to happen. I need to have like the majority of the day. to recover and get settled again. And I know I'm not unique that way.

We get to talk with people all the time and we see through those conversations how people's stress levels rise and fall [00:27:00] and how that impacts their eating behaviors. And we know returning from vacation, huge, huge, huge, difficult time for a lot of people, often even more so than the trip itself, because they don't necessarily give themselves time to recover afterwards.

Christina: That phrase, I need a vacation from my vacation. It's like, I need that re entry time to just get back into the swing of normal life again. Every person I talk to who goes on vacation feels that. So it's such a good example.

Georgie: A lot of people need to recover too after a really difficult work day or even just a work day. And if you just walk in the door and you're like no, I need to walk the dogs, make dinner, scrub the toilet, do laundry. If you just like sort of launch into doing more work without giving yourself some time to process the demands of your job, you know, that can be one of the sequences that leads to overeating later in the evening.

So, to recap, if your life has challenges, which we hope it does, because that makes it meaningful, [00:28:00] you will want to proactively manage. How do you navigate and manage the stress? You're responsible for taking actions, like eating healthfully, making time to exercise and sleep, and communicating healthy boundaries.

In addition to actions, You want to utilize your supports, especially the other people in your life. And, as Christina and I both love dogs, you can also get support from your furry family members.

Christina: Mhm.

Georgie: Make sure that you maintain your outlook. That the stresses in your life aren't destroying you, but they're calling you to raise your game.

To develop some new skills, or maybe show off your strengths. And lastly, the fourth piece we emphasize today is pacing yourself. Let yourself take some time after a difficult interaction to recover back to baseline. Plan those sort of things into your day. Don't jam it so full from start to finish that you never get a chance to recover after your exertions.

[00:29:00] Thanks for joining us today on the Breaking Up With Binge Eating podcast. We'd love to know more about what topics you need to hear more about so that you can break free permanently from binge eating. Drop me a line personally at georgiefearatgmail. com or you can drop me a line via the chat form on our website, which is confidenteaters.com.